Then, the day after the burial, she called her brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and household to a meeting and told them that she’d mourn for the traditional period of a year and a day. She said that on the last day of that year she’d fill a small silver cup with her tears, and at dawn on the following day, the “day” of the “year and a day,” she’d empty the cup of tears on the stone cairn that topped her dear husband’s grave.
All of this she duly did, and when she emerged from her black chrysalis, people said she looked lovelier than ever—stronger, if not yet serene.
On the night of our story, Conor came to his banqueting hall to dine. Aware that everybody was talking about him, he could almost hear the whispers; “Is it true? Who is this woman, Dana? Does the queen know her? Would the king do such a thing?”
It was true. Out of all the wise counselors at court and out of all the experienced men in the surrounding chieftaincies, the king had chosen for his new chancellor the young widow of his rescuer.
You have to understand the power he was giving her. At a nod of the king’s head, she’d now gain the third most powerful position in the kingdom, with intimate access to the workings of the palace and the royal estates. She would know, as the king and queen already did, where every coin came from and where every coin went. She’d decide how much the king would spend on improving the palace buildings; she alone would determine rights of way through the kingdom; she’d assess who’d supply the palace with corn, who with potatoes, who with baked soda bread, whether the existing palace staff were good enough, and so on.
About the only powers she wouldn’t have—for they belonged solely to the king and the queen—were the power of royal decree, the power to make laws. Nor would she have the power to execute somebody for a crime, nor the power to declare a man and woman husband and wife, nor the power to act in a dispute over land.
No wonder everyone watched Conor more closely than usual as he sat to dine. Not only that—this was the night Dana was supposed to arrive.
Gossip can bring on a fever, a fever of excitement. As usual, many people had gathered to dine in the palace; but they drifted in much earlier than they normally did, and they began to whisper in gales.
Someone heard that the queen might be absent, she hadn’t returned from Armagh, where she had taken offerings to a river goddess. She spent a lot of her time at shrines or plotting the stars in the heavens. This didn’t gain her many friends—and she could have done with some, because she also had the reputation of a sharp tongue. Unless you had your remarks prepared when you met her, she’d jump on what you said and query it. She wasn’t so extreme as to question someone who said, “Good morning, Your Majesty.” But if you said something careless, such as, “D’you think we’ll have a better harvest this year, Your Majesty?” she’d come back at you and say, “What was wrong with last year’s harvest?”
And that was the kind of thing the gossips seized upon, the same whisperers who claimed that the queen’s absences and maybe even her sharp tongue had caused the king to turn to this woman, Dana, for help and, maybe, sympathy. Nobody mentioned the fact that this Dana had a reputation among her own people as a foremost breeder of great cattle—and the herds of Ulster had been failing a little.
With all this gossip going on, the king sat in his great chair. Everybody thought he looked anxious and moody. But the sixty people who rose to greet him had no real appetite for food. Each of them was agog—courtiers, champions and their wives, visiting neighbors, farmers who were tenants of the king, and the many servants. What a night they expected—and what a night they got!
Soon after the king was served—first, as usual—the vital moment came. Those nearest the huge wooden doors heard the rattling clatter of hooves in the courtyard. Somewhere, a horse gave a loud, trembling whinny. Every diner in that great room looked in two directions—they looked at the door, and at the king. He gave an order with a waved hand.
A servant man hauled up the big, thick wooden bar that locked the great doors together. Another rushed to help him. Together, they dragged both doors open at the same time. And there, framed in the entrance, astride a glossy horse, was Dana—a tall, dramatic woman with shining hair the color of a blackbird’s wing.
She had timed her arrival precisely. The full moon, newly risen, hung over her right shoulder like a big, round, silver lamp. Nobody else could be seen; she had evidently told her traveling companions to stand well to the side of the doors so that she could have the stage to herself.
Wooden buildings have no silence. Timber creaks and groans, as the old sailors knew well. That night, though, the wooden walls and ramparts of the court of Ulster were quiet as the moon in the sky—and just as watchful.
Conor rose to his feet. On his face two emotions fought for control, the same way his two horses fought for control of his chariot. Dividing him to the heart and soul, one feeling conveyed deep and furrowed anxiety. But the other emotion spoke of passionate joy; he was looking at a woman he already loved—or was about to love.
Dana dismounted. The diners couldn’t yet see her face—too much shadow, and the moon too bright behind her. But her silhouette was graceful and tall, and she gave the impression of being firmly anchored, a woman sure of her place in the world. Remember now that some men in the court had already seen Dana; they had ridden a stag hunt with her. However, when it comes to describing such a woman, men reflect only what they think of her, how they react to her—they forget the details. Send a man to a wedding or a funeral, and his wife will never be satisfied with the report he brings home. Send a woman, and her listeners will be able to see the leaves on the trees in the yard of the church. Therefore, the womenfolk, the true makers of opinion in a household, were astounded. Nobody had conveyed to them the full force of this young widow’s presence.
An invisible hand led her horse away to one side, and Dana stood in the exact center of the big doorway. Framed against the night and the moon, she prepared her entrance like an actress to a stage; she threw back the skirts of her cloak and spread out her mane of hair.
As she paused, a certain man in the banqueting hall also looked at her keenly. He was a big young fellow with a thick beard who sat on the left-hand side of that room, not far from the king. His name was Dermot and he was the blacksmith. An important man, he made horseshoes for the king’s stables, he manufactured and repaired the court’s harness pieces, and he forged the champions’ weapons.
Dermot’s work had brought him much wealth. Consequently he farmed some of the best land in the province. He farmed it well, too; with his skill he had made a horse-drawn plow—five, ten times faster than a man opening the ground with a spade.
Many people thought Dermot an awkward man. He took offense easily. Being near him felt like standing on a box of eggs: a wrong shift, and something would smash. Therefore people took care in his presence. This meant that he didn’t hear all the court gossip—in fact, he only overheard snatches, and he never knew any of it fully. Yet at the same time, some people had experienced great kindness from him. The children, especially, loved him. They brought him little gifts, and he made things for them, toys and gadgets.
When the commotion of Dana’s arrival had first begun, Dermot had been leaning back on some large cushions. Now, like everyone else, he sat up and stared. Dermot had a more crucial reason for scrutinizing her; he had a powerful and unfettered devotion to the queen. Nothing improper, nothing forward, nothing indelicate or disrespectful—he simply believed the queen was saintly and unique. Nobody dared to utter a wrong word about her in Dermot’s presence, and ever since he had heard the first rumors about this Dana, he had been concerned that the queen might be usurped.
This didn’t mean that his devotion to the king stood in doubt. Quite the contrary; by every blade and every hilt, by every ring, bit, and buckle, the king knew that his blacksmith loved him. The gorgeous harness pieces Dermot made, the weapons he forged and decorated—they’d have graced any court in the world. But the differe
nce was this: duty governed Dermot’s loyalty to the king, whereas blind devotion dictated his fealty to the queen.
Naturally, Dana knew nothing of all this when she stepped forward and began the long walk up to the king’s chair. In her stride, her great cloak billowed its train behind her.
Among the red-haired, green-eyed girls and the blond, brown-eyed girls, Ireland has always bred a kind of Irishwoman who looks almost foreign, more like a woman from a Balkan country, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, or somewhere farther east, with high cheekbones and eyes dark as the Black Sea. Dana looked like that—and with that mane of raven hair and those dark eyes, no wonder she had been a chieftain’s wife.
Ireland at that time was a place where the valleys bulged with grass and grain, the land of Ulster truly was full of milk and honey, and (according to some who kept secrets), gold was to be found in the corners of the hills. Tillage yielded well, and the animals grew plump. The people had warm clothing, woven from the white and shaggy fleeces of their sheep or cut from the hides of their horses and cattle. Their houses had separate rooms; their women were skilled at baking and sewing—in other words, they knew something of comfort and how to create it. And they had pets: dogs and cats and little songbirds.
A successful way of life had evolved, of strong families sharing widely and helping each other and their neighbors. The father of the house, usually the oldest son of his own father, ruled—but not without his wife’s agreement on important matters. Their place in the world was judged according to the size of their landholding; the bigger the farm, the more senior the family, and the greatest landowners stood closest to the king, who was the most senior of all.
By the time of King Conor, the brain of the country had also developed. Many strangers arrived from Europe and brought with them interesting ideas. These could be expressed as thoughts in conversation, or as verses in poems, or as decorations on weapons and pots and pans, or as styles of dress, or as stories they had heard in their own houses. When Conor ruled Ulster, the Roman Empire was exerting its power in all corners of Europe and as far as Africa.
And then there were the people of Greece, with their wonderful poetry and benign rules for living. They had long impressed anyone who encountered them; men came to Ireland who had met Greeks and talked with them, and when they recounted those conversations, many a lively debate arose as to politics and families and heroes and gods.
The country was governed by means of a hundred and fifty petty kingships—“petty” as in the French word petit—and five large kingships. These petty kingships were really prominent families with land, names like Murphy and Dolan and MacCormack and Foley and MacCarthy and O’Brien. Were he not a king, Conor would have been addressed as no more than “Conor O’Conor”—Conor of the family of Conor. Another king of Ulster, also first-named “Conor” and later than the man I’m telling you about, was the son of a man called Nessa, so he was called “Conor MacNessa.” But you know all that already, the difference between O and Mac; in Irish names, O is “coming from” or “the family of” or, some say, “the grandson of.” And Mac means “the son of.”
The kingships owned this green and beautiful island, and they hired the ordinary people or enslaved the bondspeople to work their land. Or they leased acreage out to tenant farmers. Others provided important services, such as butchering or making cheese or milling grain to make flour.
There were five major kingships: the High Kingship at Tara, and then the rulers of the four provinces—Munster in the south; Leinster in the east; Ulster in the north; and Connacht to the west. So the king of Ulster was a figure of great significance and standing, not a man to be disrespected or taken lightly.
When he—or any king—invited someone to dine, that person truly dined. It was no small invitation. On most evenings the banqueting hall contained the king’s most important chieftains—and therefore his biggest tax contributors—plus some traveling nobility or rich tenant farmers, with perhaps a druid or two, a poet or a singer or a passing musician; and, always, a storyteller. In other words, the evening’s dining brought together all sorts of people under the king’s hospitality.
They were pleased to be invited; it made them feel rewarded for their loyalty and hard work. Their day began with a first breakfast, maybe at five o’clock in the morning when they rose to get the first fresh air of the day and care for the animals, milk the cows, feed the horses, and so forth. Then they had a second breakfast at nine o’clock, when all the milk had been taken to the dairy and the day’s cheese and butter making was commenced.
After the second breakfast, as the men attended to the cattle or the tillage, the women cooked or sewed. The meal at midday was usually brought to the men in the fields, and it often contained the proceeds of the morning’s baking.
So by eveningtide, everybody prepared to rest, and most ordinary folk in their homes sat around their kitchen tables and ate the produce of their fields—except on those special evenings when they were invited by the king to one of his nightly banquets. If you were a member of the court, however, like Dermot the blacksmith, you went to the banquet more often.
Now: Dermot the blacksmith had no wife. So, when Dana, Ulster’s new chancellor and purse-keeper, continued her long walk up that banqueting hall, it became Dermot’s turn to show conflict on his face. Across his countenance, as it were, two horses began to gallop. One had a black coat—the dark concern that such a woman might supplant the queen in the king’s affections. The other shone bright—the fire that glows across a man’s forehead and eyes when he sees for the first time the woman with whom he will fall in love forever and whom he wants to make his own. As Dana approached, Dermot rose to his feet and stared openly at her.
And still the queen hadn’t appeared. As everyone watched Dana, a new question arose in their minds: Which woman was the more beautiful, the queen or this newcomer? Dana’s tall, they muttered—the queen’s short; Dana’s figure is like the letter S—the queen loves food; Dana is dark with smoldering eyes—the queen is as gold as a June morning, with eyes blue as the flowers of flax.
So it was that in Ulster on a moonlit night long, long ago, the king, a decent if anxious man, had one strong and beautiful woman already in his life and now introduced a second. And, as if that might not prove troublesome enough, Dermot the blacksmith decided to tell the queen.
She, at that moment, wasn’t far away. On her return from Armagh, she had taken, as she sometimes did, an early supper in order to be with her two little children. Typically, she’d now join the king for the music and poems and stories that often came after the evening meal. As yet, though, she hadn’t entered the banquet hall.
But Dana had. A stately procession of one, with every eye watching her, she reached the top of the room. The king rose to greet his new chancellor. Dana bowed and kissed the king’s hands in the correct homage. She sat down by his side, and he waved to the harpers to play.
But she sat in the queen’s chair! Well—every man and woman in that hall, whether rich, poor, or bonded, gasped. Some all but stood on their own chairs to look. Older wives, who knew about these things, put their hands to their mouths. What’s going on? they asked themselves. The king has allowed a strange woman to sit in his wife’s place! Has the queen been ousted? Is she gone? Is that why this Dana has taken her chair? Or worse—does the queen not know yet, and will she only grasp that things have changed when she sees that her chair has been taken by another woman? And a beautiful, younger woman at that?
The king didn’t seem to notice. From the expression on his face, a star might have fallen from the skies into the palm of his hand. Perhaps he looked like that when he first met Dana, and perhaps he invited her to become his chancellor because he had fallen in love with her. Or maybe it had only happened at that exact moment, when the king saw how Dana’s beauty glowed inside the walls of his own palace.
Or maybe it had been happening all the while since he had met her. It’s sometimes the case that people are best regarded when we?
??re away from them. Whatever the truth of it, no doubt could exist in anyone’s mind that King Conor of Ulster found this beauty special.
The servants brought food, and a conversation opened up between Dana and the king, as naturally as could be expected between a well-mannered guest and a civilized host: Did you have a safe journey? I hope it hasn’t fatigued you. Was the weather clement? It’s been very nice weather here lately. And so on.
All around them, people pretended to busy themselves with their own conversations, but they never took their eyes off the king and his new friend. Dermot looked at them too, he looked for one long moment—and then hurried from the hall.
In the corridors of the palace the blacksmith found the queen. She had heard the commotion outside and seen the horses gleam in the moonlight. Next, she had recognized the huge sound of the wooden doors being opened, which never happened except for a special visitor. As a result, she had begun to make her way to the king.
Although Conor hadn’t shared with her his appointment of Dana, the queen had heard the rumors and much of the gossip. But she decided not to raise it with her husband—undisclosed knowledge is often a source of power.
When Dermot saw the queen walking toward him in the long wooden corridor, he began to run to her, and she noted his agitation. She liked Dermot; she appreciated that he showed her proper respect, and it’s possible that the queen might have thought of him as a potential husband, should any catastrophe fall from the sky and hit the king on the head. Nor would she have been marrying beneath her; blacksmiths had an honored place in early Irish society.
Dermot spoke, trembling a little.